


Sky At Dawn

by DeCuvieri



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, also: your favorite characters are probably dead, and possible tricky jesse, and sadness, and some non-explicit sex, but a lot of angst, supernatural monster au, unless you like sojourn in which case you lucked out, with vampires!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-01 22:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20418959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCuvieri/pseuds/DeCuvieri
Summary: Gabriel goes to collect Jesse after a hunt drags on too long.





	Sky At Dawn

Sometimes assignments draw out longer than expected. It happens often enough that nobody panics straight away. Three extra days come and go, but once the counter ticks into four Gabriel takes notice. He sends another hunter to take a look. She comes back having found nothing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean trouble. The best way to kill a creature of darkness is to strike from an even darker shadow, and finding those vantage points can take time.

Five days and McCree still hasn’t reported back. He’s been on longer hunts chasing after alert prey, but Gabriel has a bad feeling so he goes himself. He finds the rundown motel from which McCree chose to stage his operation, and the owner is happy to be rid of the things which were left behind. Jesse had paid for the room in advance but the tab ended three days ago. It’s a bad sign.

Gabriel looks through McCree’s belongings and finds clothes, reagents, extra ammo. He doesn’t find Jesse’s gun or his prayerbook. His favorite duster and hat are also missing. McCree was prepared when he’d last set out, not ambushed and dragged off into the night, so that’s good. His target may have fled and forced him to give chase, or perhaps he bit off more than he could chew and is lying low elsewhere. Gabriel rifles through a stack of papers and finds newspaper clippings about dead cattle, ambushes on the roads, and missing people. They point to a common area to the south of town, so that’s where he begins looking.

This is McCree’s country. It’s why he’d wanted to go, and it’s why Gabriel picked him when more seasoned hunters were available. It’s a hard place to blend into if you didn’t grow up in it, and he thought Jesse would be familiar with the holes and recesses monsters would use to hide. The Incident had decimated these rural economies without coming near, bankrupting ranchers and farmers who couldn't operate without their automaton labor. Now abandoned homesteads litter the vast desert while closed mines lie scattered up in the hills. Plenty of places for a small den of vampires to lair in a huge area to search.

It takes a while, but Gabriel finds what he's looking for on an old dairy farm. He counts them as he walks through the house and finds nine piles of ash inside, three dark spots outside which might have been more before the breeze came along. In the root cellar: more ash, two rotted humans drained of blood, and a third put out of his misery with a clean snap of the neck. Gabriel retreats from the vomitous stench of the cellar and stands outside, letting the fresh air of the approaching storm clear room in his head for thinking.

This wasn’t a den, it was a _nest_. McCree’d handled it, but something had gone wrong. Even if it were an act of mercy, Jesse wouldn’t wrap his hands around a man’s head so long as he had a bullet he could fire behind an ear. He held the opinion that it was better not to see death coming.

Gabriel scans the horizon. In the same direction in which the storm is churning into something to be feared he spots a neighboring ranch. McCree’s been missing eight days.

* * *

The next house is smaller, has been abandoned longer, and probably won’t be standing in a couple more years. The windows are all busted open and waft the dull stink of mildew at him before Gabriel gets to the door.

“McCree?” he calls over the reluctant groan of hinges. Yellowed sheer curtains, eaten to tatters by bugs and the elements, flutter along the wall but otherwise make up the only movement in the house. A layer of dirt covers every surface of a life left behind: faded paintings, a televid set too old to bother keeping, a couch and chair set the owners couldn't sell before they had to leave.

Finally, a familiar voice drones from deeper within: “Yeah.”

Gabriel follows the sound. He’d like to bark at Jesse to get his ass in the car and he can explain on the way, because the roof over his head is highly suspect and that estimate of “a couple more years” was generous given the weather situation. But something is very wrong. Jesse would have heard the approach of a vehicle and the slamming of the car door. At the very least he should have come out when Gabriel called. He's chosen not to.

“Where are you?”

“Back bedroom. Last door on the right, here.”

Off the living room stems a tiny hallway wide enough for one person to pass through. It’s narrow and sends Gabriel’s sense for danger on red alert. He has a sidearm. His hand itches for it because everything about this feels off, but he doesn’t draw it. He’s not going to escalate before he even knows what he’s walking into. And anyway, Gabriel would only win a duel with Jesse fucking McCree if he started already trained on the kid’s head.

“Everything okay?” he asks, making sure not to let his creeping dread taint the question. He deliberately steps on the glass of a fallen picture frame to alert McCree of where he is, presenting himself as a non-threat.

The ranchers must have gone somewhere with only one bedroom. There’s no furniture across the hall, but they left everything in the guest room to disintegrate in their old home. Some animal must have gotten in because it smells like piss and one corner of the mattress is shredded. Sitting on the far side, his back to Reyes as he looks out another broken window, is Jesse.

Gabriel gives it a few moments before prompting him again.

“McCree?”

Jesse angles his head to look at Gabriel over his shoulder but doesn’t quite follow through. Just stares at the floor like it wields some hypnotic power over him.

“I tried to do it myself,” he croaks after the silence has dragged out long enough to go from 'uncomfortable' to 'worrisome' to 'tortuous'. “I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t want you to see, but I kept losin’ my nerve. Fuckin’ idiot and a coward.”

Jesse turns back to the wall. Gabriel hovers in the doorway and refuses to move like the house is rigged to explode. Tried to do _what?_ He’s afraid to ask.

“I was down the road. You purged an entire coven.”

A bitter laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Saw they had built themselves a pretty good-sized nest, but I figured I could do it on my own if I hit ‘em fast. ‘Course, that meant I had no backup when I saw one go down into the cellar, and then I heard all that screamin’...”

“You rushed in.” Throw plans and caution to the wind to attempt a longshot rescue? Sounds like Jesse, despite Gabriel’s preaching that trying to be a hero would only get him killed.

“Turns out you was right about me all along, boss. I’m good at a lot of things, but I guess I can be dumb as a rock sometimes. Shit, I can't even tell vamp food apart from a vamp fledgling. That fella was well past the point of savin’ before I got there.”

Reyes frowns. The corpse in the root cellar was in too poor of condition to see the signs. He’d assumed all three of the humans were being fed on, but if the vampires were adding more to their line they would need enough blood to sustain them and sate the fledgling's new thirst. Two victims wouldn’t have been enough.

“They were turning him, but you didn’t kill him with silver. Why?”

“Well, the sentry that knocked me out took my gun before dumpin’ me in with him. When I woke up all I had to defend myself from the crazy bastard was my hands.”

Wait. No. Oh, no, no, no-

“When you were unconscious, did he…” Gabriel tosses the line of thought away. The vampire was being turned and probably feral with a constant demand to feed. Of course he’d bitten Jesse. “How long has it been?”

“What’s the date?”

Gabriel tells him.

After calculating it in his head McCree, his voice uncharacteristically flat considering the horror of his response, says: “It was a week before they let me out of the cellar. I suppose that means it’s been about ten days since I got it. Don’t come no closer, now. I already said that I didn’t want you to see.”

Only then Gabriel realizes he has stepped into the room. There’s a brief pause before he finishes rounding the bed and grabs McCree by the shoulder. Yanking back, Jesse swears at him and tells him to stop, but he forces Jesse to face him. His trainee’s complexion is sickly and pallid, lips pale, cheeks wet. It’s hard to make it out now, but as it gets darker that strange light in his eyes will burn in the dark. Gabriel decides, yes, he needs that last bit of confirmation. He thumbs McCree’s upper lip back, exposing the elongated fang.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” Jesse repeats, helpless, his strength and composure draining from him all at once. He falls limp against Gabriel's chest, and they hold each other while the storm rolls in.

* * *

After the rain starts billowing through the window they move to the living room. Gabriel leans against a far wall. Jesse sits on the floor, his back against the disgusting sofa. There’s a vast expanse in the space between them.

“I guess the vamps figured that once I turned I’d just accept being one of them. After they fed me from their reserves a couple times I convinced them to let me out. Played it up, said I felt better than I ever have. Caught ‘em by surprise when I found where they buried my stuff.”

Gabriel listens, though they both know covering the details won’t bring anything but misery. Jesse’s talking to fill the silence, or because he wants to explain himself. Everything he’s said in the past hour has been framed like an apology. He’d been captured, he’d been infected, and he’d taken blood. He’s so sealed into the curse there’s nothing Gabriel can do to save him from it.

“When did you last feed?”

Shamed, McCree admits, “I drank everythin’ they had after the fight. I'd meant to set a jug aside, but once I started…”

Reyes bows his head. It takes a lot of blood to drudge a fledgling vampire through the onset of the disease. He doesn’t blame Jesse for his lack of restraint.

“You need more.” The thirst will drive him mad if he goes too long without, and their history won’t be enough to stop McCree from looking at him for sustenance.

“Shit, boss. I can already hear your heartbeat like a hammer against my head.” Far above them, churning clouds punctuate that declaration with a roll of thunder. “There ain’t no point in drawin’ this out until I’m some raving lunatic. I’d rather we end it soon, while I still got some of my dignity left.”

“Soon,” Gabriel echoes in a murmur. Jesse’s eyes flicker up to meet his.

“Hm. Yeah. Now, I reckon. Unless you got some miracle in your back pocket worth waitin’ for.”

Fuck everything about this.

Gabriel goes to the kitchen and rifles through cabinets. The shelf where the glasses were once kept has collapsed into a pile of shards and mouse droppings. There's a coffee mug higher up that was spared. He carries sanitizing wipes in his belt, and uses one to clean a spot on his upper arm, then his combat knife, and then the dusty cup. Jesse calls to ask what he’s doing just as Gabriel makes the cut, quickly trading the counter his blade for the mug and pressing the ceramic lip beneath the wound. Minutes pass.

“Hey, answer me.”

“Stay there.” He has to flex the muscle to keep it bleeding, but once his task is complete Gabriel seals the gash with biotic gel and pulls his sleeve back down. He’s fully put back together when he carries his offering out.

“What’ve you got there?” Jesse cocks his head suspiciously at the mug. Looks inside. Gets angry. “Fuck no. You must be out of your goddamn mind if you think I’d take that.”

“You need it. I could spare it.”

“I ain’t drinkin’ _your_ blood! What the hell is the matter with you?”

He continues holding it out to Jesse and says, “It’s done. If you want it to go to waste, dump it out.”

The argument becomes a silent test of wills as Jesse bores a furious stare into Reyes, who is secure in the knowledge that he’ll win this one. His confidence isn’t rooted in the fact McCree will surrender to his dark tendencies (he's actually sure Jesse will fight that to the last), but in how unconditionally McCree trusts in him.

“Why are you makin’ this so much harder than it has to be?” Jesse whispers. Gabriel can hear his heart breaking.

“If I had bourbon I’d offer you that. This is the best I can do.”

McCree wipes his nose with his wrist and snickers. “One for the road, is that it?”

“You gonna take it or not?”

If blood were less thick Jesse would have shot the mug’s contents like whiskey. Concerns about dignity set aside in the wake of his thirst, he suckles at the slow run as the last of the gift drains out. Gabriel doesn’t watch, instead peering through curtains now plastered to the wall by the air currents in the house.

Jack hadn’t gotten this before the end. He’d gone down roaring in defiance as death circled around him, firing clip after clip of blessed rounds into thralls desperate to shield their blood matron. Gabriel couldn’t get there before the mob had overwhelmed him, beaten him, broken his bones and crushed the life from his chest. It was a noble death for a hunter, but a terrible death for a man he loved like family.

Jack, Ana, Gerard, Reinhardt, Angela… They lost Genji to his demon-possessed brother earlier this year. After Wilhelm was killed Torbjorn left for some faraway hiding place, dragging his trainee daughter kicking and screaming with him. And now Jesse. There are so few of them left.

Gabriel’s attention is ripped back to the present when the discarded mug _thumps_ to the floor. It’s the only warning he gets before McCree lunges.

“Shit!” He throws his arms around his head and stumbles back into the wall. Jesse slams into him like a hypertrain. Christ, he’d just told Gabriel he’d tricked the vampires into thinking he was safe and Gabriel still went and fell for the same fucking thing.

McCree does not try to bite him. Before Gabriel can process what’s going on Jesse is kissing him hard, like he’s demanding something Gabriel is unwilling to give. Reyes reels at the taste of his own blood on Jesse’s tongue, at first overpowering any sensation that could make this enjoyable before he forces it aside. He chokes down his revulsion and kisses back. A part of him mourns waiting for so long because it was never the right place or the right time. Now it’s the absolute worst place at the worst time, and his first taste of Jesse has been tainted. But McCree’s hands are scrabbling over his jaw and down his chest with urgency like if this doesn’t happen _right now_ the one of them who’s dreaming will wake up and ruin the chance, and Gabriel is not going to stop him.

Jesse’s hands go to his belt. Gabriel nods, and he tries to focus on the parts of McCree that are still with him, still whole, in a desperate attempt to preserve the future memory.

* * *

After the storm blows over they sit out on the porch. The smell is less oppressive out there. Gabriel can’t see shit but the lit ends of their cigars and the dim glow of the vampire's eyes. He’s not much for smoking, but Jesse offered it and he felt it was the right thing to do. For hours they tell stories and reminisce about hunts from days past, of friends long gone, of people saved, of a world that rarely noticed them but will feel their loss in countless unknowable ways.

Dawn is drawing near when Jesse asks, “Will you walk with me?” and starts them on a path east.

It feels like preparing to watch the end of all things, like they alone know their anchor star is about to explode into a broiling red giant and swallow this miserable rock into a molten, celestial hell. There’s fear for what comes next, but also a placid feeling that comes with accepting the inevitable. There's no fighting it from here. All they can do is take their defeat with grace. It’s a bizarre type of serenity.

“I know folks like us don’t often get to pick, but I always had an idea in mind for how I’d like to be laid to rest,” McCree says after they’ve walked a ways, not headed anywhere in particular. The old fences have fallen into disrepair, leaving them to wander through old fields unimpeded. A line of crooked posts, not connected to each other by anything, jut from the soil like spines.

“Unmarked desert grave with a view of the open sky.”

He can barely make out how Jesse’s brows jump in surprise, then gives Gabriel a grin.

“Oh. Guess we’ve had this conversation before, huh?” McCree tilts his head in thought. “No point diggin’ a grave just to bury some ash. I guess bein’ scattered to the wind ain’t such a bad way to spend eternity either.” He unholsters his peacekeeper and holds it out to his partner. He wants it to be his own gun. Gabriel takes it in a forced, mechanical motion. “Hey. When you look back on this, you remember it was a kindness, okay? You know me. Any life where I can’t have the sun barin’ down on my shoulders, and people gotta hurt so I can get by, I don’t want it.”

“I know.”

They stand in each other’s presence and take it in. Jesse’s managing a hell of a brave face for Gabriel’s sake because he’s not the one who’s going to have to live with this. Bullshit, the comforting should be going the other way.

“Wish I could’ve seen it one last time,” Jesse muses, turning from Gabriel to the lightening horizon. Far removed from the concerns of men and immortals, the sky’s turning orange and yellow. The sun will start peeking over the edge of the earth soon. “I suppose everyone thinks something like that at-”

Gabriel raises the gun and fires. Jesse’d always said it was better not to see it coming.

* * *

Sojourn is the one who meets him upon his return. Gabriel sees her note the empty passenger seat while he gets the box of Jesse’s things from the back.

“Did you find him?”

“Yes,” he says. She’ll figure it out.

Tomorrow he’ll clear the room, pack everything up, and ready it for the next trainee. They don’t have the space to enshrine the fallen. For now, Gabriel sets the stuff inside the door and locks himself in McCree’s quarters, looking at the cowboy’s orphaned belongings and feeling... nothing. He drove a long way with naught but the company of his thoughts. He is exhausted, and he’s mentally shutting down in a way he hasn’t since the Incident. Gabriel climbs into Jesse’s bunk and falls asleep on a pillow bearing the warm scents of tobacco, cologne, home.

His sleep isn’t restful, but it’s mercifully dreamless.

* * *

It’s a message alert on McCree’s spare datapad that wakes him. Somebody doesn’t yet know they won’t get a response. Gabriel blinks bleary-eyed at his surroundings as reality assures him that yes, it was all real. The room is pitch black aside from the electronic glow from the screen; he'd slept through the day. Gabriel sits up and lets consciousness return to him in its own time. He feels like shit. He probably will for a good, long while.

After thirty seconds the datapad turns itself off, plunging the room back into indistinguishable shapes in the moonlight. Reyes reaches for the bedside lamp and jostles the little table, sending things rolling off in a waterfall of loud clinks. The light reveals loose bullets scattering across the floor like bugs. He swears and swings his legs off the bed.

Might as well get to work.

He starts by picking up the mess he’s just made, collecting the rounds one by one and cradling each in the palm of his hand. Why the hell would Jesse keep so many bullets on his bedside table? A gun within arm's reach while you slept, Gabriel could get see, but what kind of shootout was McCree expecting in their own base? (Too late to ask or tease him about it now.) It’s not until Reyes examines the accumulated pile together does he notice the brass casings are all the same, but the bullets are different. The answer takes longer to come to him than it should, but he realizes: some are steel, others silver.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that Gabriel is able to form a cohesive thought. His head has been a hodgepodge of vague ideas and notions since he watched Jesse’s body convulse into dust moments before clouding over the ground, but one gets through the dense fog of his sorrow intact: _You didn’t check the bullet._

The hunter freezes. Jesse had wanted to die by his own gun. At the time it had seemed like a very Jesse McCree-like request. He’d loaded the bullet he wanted for himself into the chamber, and Gabriel had accepted his choice without question. Why would he need to question it? The execution was all by McCree’s wish.

Reyes’ subconscious starts piling facts on his frayed mind that he can’t quite arrange into a picture yet, but something in the nebulous void is scurrying to hand him puzzle pieces. 1) Jesse’s peacekeeper was a Lindholm custom design, and it took custom ammunition. 2) McCree tooled the rounds himself, which is why they all had the same type of case. 3) Steel rounds would dust a vampire, but the creature would just gather strength in the shadows for a few months and return anew. 4) You needed silver to finish the job.

And 5) McCree was a vampire, and Gabriel hadn’t checked the fucking bullet he'd put him down with.

He pounces on the box from the motel and digs out Jesse’s ammo bag. In it, he finds cases of both silver and steel, neither of them full. Of course. You didn't waste precious silver on anything that could be killed without. Jesse had taken some of both when he’d set out to torch the vampire nest because human thralls and guard dogs can be dispatched with regular ammunition. 

Gabriel lowers himself on the edge of the bed and sits there for a long time, rationalizing back and forth. His thoughts gain momentum, spurred on by each deduction until questions start spinning together too fast to keep up with. The night in the house: was it was a final parting word from a man who loved Gabriel too much to leave this world without seeing him one last time or was it a cunning staging of one? Jesse McCree was a survivor. He knew how his teacher thought. Try to disappear or fake his own death, Reyes would never stop searching until presented with absolute proof. But give Gabriel a story with a clear and definite end, closure and goodbyes all neatly wrapped up with a little bow? It’s just the kind of dirty, underhanded ploy McCree would use to trick his target into moving where he wanted them, like out of his way.

_Any life where I can’t have the sun barin’ down on my shoulders..._

“Bullshit,” Gabriel growls. Jumps a little, because he hadn’t meant to talk to himself. But it's true: there’s no way Jesse would have done that to him. Not after everything. If McCree had asked for help, Gabriel wouldn’t have been able to maintain his resolve. He’d have taken Jesse to the farthest reaches of the planet to hide, and he’d slash his arm open every day if that’s what was needed. Jesse had to know that.

(Of course he knew. He also knew how few of them there are left, and that those remaining couldn’t afford to lose Jesse _and _Gabriel.)

After the deed was done Gabriel had dropped the peacekeeper on the ground, marking the site like an unengraved headstone. He could go back for it, but all he’d find in the barrel is an empty casing that won’t tell him one way or the other. He’d need the actual bullet, the one which flew through McCree’s head and kept going. He could comb the desert for years and never find it.

Maybe Gabriel is wrong, and he's just reaching for remote possibilities that could give him back that which is gone forever.

Or maybe the sun is overrated.

* * *

Four years later he gets a call.

“You were right,” Sojourn tells him. “Locals said the attacks stopped a week ago. We found a pack of six deep in the forest, all shot dead. Completely blindsided. I don’t know who this freelancer is, but he’s crazy to take down a whole den of lycans on his own. Where are you?”

Gabriel sucks dirt and grit from between his teeth. The wind has been kicking sand up into his eyes, his mouth, down his collar. The crime scene drones he brought along wobble in the strong gusts, scanning the ground as they have been for the past hour.

“Chasing ghosts.” In their line of work such a statement can be a literal or a figurative. Sojourn lets him have his ambiguity.

“Okay. Well, the trail’s cold now, but I want to put Lena on finding this hunter. If he’s that good then he should be shooting for us.”

“Negative. Pull off and head home. We’ve got plenty of dangerous things that need to be tracked down.”

“You sure? We could use the help, and he might prefer the safety of numbers.”

“If he wanted to join us he'd have sought us out. He’s doing fine on his own.” Gabriel hangs up and looks around. It’s been a long time, but the landmarks seem right. The crest of one mountain to the north, high hills to the south, the dilapidated ranch house a distance behind him. If this isn’t the spot then he must have walked over it while ushering the drones around. He shakes his head. “It’s not here. Let’s go.”

The little robots beep their affirmation and buzz past him, back to the truck where their charging stations await. Gabriel tells himself it could have been buried or moved by animals. The elements. A wandering stranger who’d stumbled upon it in a one-in-a-million discovery. Four years is a long time, and the desert is not motionless.

Gabriel climbs into the truck. Finding the revolver wouldn’t have been proof of anything. _Not_ finding it isn’t a confirmation either, but in his heart he knows.


End file.
